theocracy with temporary rewards suggested the two correlative ideas of temporary reverse, and eventual restoration; and thus, by the personification of the people’s suffering, led to the idea of a suffering Messiah.(922) Discussing the complex Messianic conception, he tries to explain its origin by natural causes, by resolving it(923) into a combination of the different types of thought, presented in the earlier history. Approaching the subject of Christianity, he considers it to be one of the Jewish sects, a lawful continuation of the prophetic reforms;(924) therein anticipating the idea which he has developed in the second work above named, concerning the rise and progress of Christianity; in which he has adopted the views of the historical criticism of the school of Tübingen. Regarding Christianity to be a reform of Judaism mixed with Greek dogmas,(925) he attributes to St. Paul, in contrast to the Jewish apostles, the idea of giving it universality; and to the early Roman church the idea of giving it unity;(926) illustrating by natural causes the gradual origin of the church,(927) and the pretended concretion of dogmas(928) by mixture with Alexandrian philosophy. These works, too recondite to be popular, and too unsatisfactory to be dangerous, do not appear likely to affect largely the English inquirer; but the case is different with the work which next meets us by another author, “the Creed of Christendom,”(929) which, on account of its clearness of statement and variety of material, is the most dangerous work of unbelief of this age.